The Palin Follies

Via FOX comes what is sure to prove just the beginning of the full story of Sarah Palin's vice-presidential nomination. In today's chapter, we learn that when McCain's people started prepping Palin for the national stage, they discovered that the Alaska governor couldn't name the signatories to NAFTA (The U.S., Canada, and Mexico), nor did she realize that Africa was a continent rather than a country. Watch:



And Newsweek has more on Sarah Palin's GOP-funded extreme makeover. Yes, it's worse than first reported:

Newsweek has also learned that Palin's shopping spree at high-end department stores was more extensive than previously reported. While publicly supporting Palin, McCain's top advisers privately fumed at what they regarded as her outrageous profligacy. One senior aide said that Nicole Wallace had told Palin to buy three suits for the convention and hire a stylist. But instead, the vice presidential nominee began buying for herself and her family--clothes and accessories from top stores such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Neiman Marcus.

The Republican blame game just got a whole lot more intense. What's noteworthy about these two items is that they air the dirty laundry that has been piling up beneath the Republican bed. Indeed, the debate is on within GOP circles as to whether Palin represents the party's future, or its further decline. Is "moderate" now a dirty word in the Republican vocabulary, as some on this blog have suggested? Do the defeats of McCain, Christopher Shays and Gordon Smith mean that the path to victory in 2012 will be found only if the party takes a hard right turn as epitomized by Sarah Palin?

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According to a new poll, an overwhelming majority of the country has a resounding answer: NO! Only 12% of those surveyed said Palin should be the choice to lead the party the next time around. Even when the sample is limited to Republicans, Palin still comes in third, behind Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee. Oddly, of those three, it is Romney, the guy who is leading the poll, who seems the most moderate (everything is relative).

It is interesting to watch Republican thinkers at this moment in time. Some, like Dick Armey, seem to recognize what exit polls show. With each passing day the GOP has become a party of older, white, Southern men. As astonishing as it sounds, there is now not a single Republican senator in all of New England. But it isn't as if a migration has been underway. We're talking wholesale atrophy. Democratic registration far outweighed Republican over the past four years. And that brings us to George W. Bush. Fiscal conservatives are quick to blame the party's defeat on him. After all, here's a guy whose spending would make any moderate Democrat blush. So, the fis-cons figure, do the opposite. Cut spending, cut taxes, go back to full-scale deregulation. Survival-of-the-fittest Capitalism. The problem? Those too are outdated ideas. In fact, they are the very policies that brought on the financial catastrophe we now face. Besides which, in tough times it's not a winning electoral argument. Seriously, it's not as if John McCain and Sarah Palin didn't try their hardest to make this an election about cutting taxes. They did. It didn't work.

Call this novel "Paradigms Lost," but the Republican party's moment of denoument has not been pretty. While social conservatives can take heart at the passage of three ant-gay-marriage measures, that victory, too, will prove short-lived. Why? Because we are a changing country.

What the GOP has counted on for so long -- and which has worked, by the way -- is that young people and minorities didn't show up to the polls. Well, they did this year. If, for some reason, you've let yourself think that Barack Obama is just a blip on the radar of racial progress, just wait for the coming wave of multi-cultural candidates about to repaint our statehouses, congress and executive branch. Send Louisiana's Republican Gov. Bobby Jindal a text message if you don't believe me. Old, white, southern males are an ever-shrinking portion of our society, and unless Republicans figure this out fast, their party will go the way of the Whigs. Yes, the culture wars are on death's doorstep. Vietnam is meaningless to the bulk of the electorate. Simply uttering Ronald Reagan's name does not a convincing argument make.

That brings us back to Palin. Is she a savior or a spoiler? From yesterday's Washington Times:

"Sara Palin might be as close to a traditional conservative as we've had on the main stage, but I think she risks being trivialized in much the same way as Dan Quayle--pushed into national leadership before she was really ready and unable to hold the stage," said David Davenport, Hoover Institution research fellow.

"So where will this be sorted out?" asked Mr. Davenport. "I don't think in Congress, where Republican presence is diminished. Not by McCain, who's had his chance and isn't strong philosophically anyway. Not by Palin, who will struggle to hold a place on the stage. I'm not sure any of the other also-rans from this race are likely to carry a lot of clout."

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